What's Your Truck Payment ??? (Stay on topic please!)

I have no credit cards, and no outlying bills. I could pay cash for a car but why bother?? I use the car payments for a great credit builder, mortgages and car payments are the two best forms of building credit. Different strokes for different folks.. :lol:

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Its sad that most people think that it normal to owe money on a car, they just accept paying interest and payment, so they write checks that could be put into their savings account instead is going to a dealership/bank. They pay off one car then trade it in and get into an car payment. A vicious cycle. Plus most people buy and start a payment that they can't even afford. They get into trouble on down the road with the payments and guess what they owe more money then it is worth. That is why it is sad to me.

You say you can pay cash for a car, so are you saying you just like paying extra money for interest?

Credit builder? Building an imaginary number score, a score that disappears after 7 years if you do not get into new debt.

People do not even have to have a credit score to get a loan to buy a house anymore. Some mortgage companies are actually doing research or interviewing people that apply for a loan instead of looking at an imaginary number to approve the loan. No credit score is just as good as a good credit score.

I tell you this because that is my personal belief with money, I do want to get into any debt (other than a mortgage but a good down payment). Save the money first then buy it.

Keep in mind that anymore a lot of employers look at your credit score. That's another reason I need to eventually improve my credit again because until I do (or wait another 3-4 years or so for everything form my time of unemployment to come off my credit), my ability to get a GOOD job is impacted. I personally think it's stupid for a regular job (not dealing with money or law enforcement), especially with how a lot of people's credit is in the tank, but it's something that I've seen more and more. Course they also seem to hire people who are already employed a lot more than they do unemployed people. If you have a good job and don't plan on moving to another job anytime soon then that's probably a good plan to avoid debt. But if you don't, it may get you into trouble when job hunting.

That being said, $500 a month or more would not be worth it to me for a truck. I wouldn't buy new anyway, nor could I bring myself to pay more than 20 grand for a vehicle, and honestly I usually try to stay below 10 grand.

My Tahoe that I currently own was paid in full by me and my parents. Of course it was only around $4,000.

My moms last car she bought we payed in full and bought it brand new. It's a 2009 Subaru Forester X, we paid around 20,000 for it, half was from trading in my dad's Jeep Compass to the dealer and the rest was from bank account and insurance payment from my moms totaled 1999 Subaru Outback.

Most cars my family buys are paid in full because with my dad being an architect his work and income fluxes with the economy, so if there's a dip my dad doesn't get paid as much and my family lives paycheck to paycheck, but when the economy is stable we have plenty of financial safety net which we usually save for when the dip comes back and we struggle.

Of course my family never buys cars much over $25,000 so we're a really bad statistic.

Its sad that most people think that it normal to owe money on a car, they just accept paying interest and payment, so they write checks that could be put into their savings account instead is going to a dealership/bank. They pay off one car then trade it in and get into an car payment. A vicious cycle. Plus most people buy and start a payment that they can't even afford. They get into trouble on down the road with the payments and guess what they owe more money then it is worth. That is why it is sad to me.

You say you can pay cash for a car, so are you saying you just like paying extra money for interest?

Credit builder? Building an imaginary number score, a score that disappears after 7 years if you do not get into new debt.

People do not even have to have a credit score to get a loan to buy a house anymore. Some mortgage companies are actually doing research or interviewing people that apply for a loan instead of looking at an imaginary number to approve the loan. No credit score is just as good as a good credit score.

I tell you this because that is my personal belief with money, I do want to get into any debt (other than a mortgage but a good down payment). Save the money first then buy it.

But like you said different strokes for different folks

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I agree with some of your thoughts of how some people trade in a car the day they get it paid of and take on more payments and yes it can be a vicious cycle. However the fast that you think a credit score is an imaginary number is completely crazy. I am just graduating with a management and finance degree and believe me every banker/finance person will tell you that no score is worse than a bad score. If you have a bad score you can at least explain what happened and show them how you went about fixing it. No score shows them that you have never made enough money to get a loan in the first place. I know if your making enough they will still give you a loan without a credit score but that is not always the case. It is definately good to build your score.

Keep in mind that anymore a lot of employers look at your credit score. That's another reason I need to eventually improve my credit again because until I do (or wait another 3-4 years or so for everything form my time of unemployment to come off my credit), my ability to get a GOOD job is impacted. I personally think it's stupid for a regular job (not dealing with money or law enforcement), especially with how a lot of people's credit is in the tank, but it's something that I've seen more and more. Course they also seem to hire people who are already employed a lot more than they do unemployed people. If you have a good job and don't plan on moving to another job anytime soon then that's probably a good plan to avoid debt. But if you don't, it may get you into trouble when job hunting.

That being said, $500 a month or more would not be worth it to me for a truck. I wouldn't buy new anyway, nor could I bring myself to pay more than 20 grand for a vehicle, and honestly I usually try to stay below 10 grand.

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In my limited experience of looking for jobs I have applied for many engineering jobs and have an engineering job now and I have never came across an employer looking at a credit score. I can not disagree with you but if I knew that a company is not going to give you a job because of no score then I would not want to work with them in the first place.

However the fast that you think a credit score is an imaginary number is completely crazy. I am just graduating with a management and finance degree and believe me every banker/finance person will tell you that no score is worse than a bad score. If you have a bad score you can at least explain what happened and show them how you went about fixing it. No score shows them that you have never made enough money to get a loan in the first place. I know if your making enough they will still give you a loan without a credit score but that is not always the case. It is definately good to build your score.

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I have two 30 plus years experience financial adviser would completely and utterly disagree with you. You can't explain a bad score because in reality you have been bad with your money, you can show why their is no score. Church Hill mortgage is a country wide company that doesn't go off of score just for an example. They do a process of manual underwriting. I am sorry I don't believe someone out of college compared to experienced financial advisers.

In my limited experience of looking for jobs I have applied for many engineering jobs and have an engineering job now and I have never came across an employer looking at a credit score. I can not disagree with you but if I knew that a company is not going to give you a job because of no score then I would not want to work with them in the first place.

I have two 30 plus years experience financial adviser would completely and utterly disagree with you. You can't explain a bad score because in reality you have been bad with your money, you can show why their is no score. Church Hill mortgage is a country wide company that doesn't go off of score just for an example. They do a process of manual underwriting. I am sorry I don't believe someone out of college compared to experienced financial advisers.

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Well for starters I too am now working as a financial advisor with a company. For one they too looked at my credit score before they would hire me, so at least for that company it is something they look at. I would imagine it depends on the job you are applying for. Also, if oyu dont believe me that is fine, but I have talked with quite a few different banks in my area and that is what they told me. I would guess this also varies depending on the bank and area they service. Although this has nothing to do with the orginal post!

With the companies that look at credit when hiring someone, I think a bad score hurts your chances as much and likely much more so than no score. And hey, stuff happens. I was living WELL within my means when I was on Active Duty. I was able to save a considerable amount of money before I went back to the civilian world. That's how I was able to hold on as long as I was able to after I came off Active Duty. I just ran into a situation where nobody felt that my military experience (largely in the logistics field) was worth anything. And the longer someone is unemployed, the less likely someone is to hire them in many cases. Had I been able to see the future, I would probably still have no credit score as I would not have taken out a loan on that truck. Hindsight is 20/20 though.

I deal with the HR departments of many large companies, and don't know what each companies policies are, but from what I have observed, if you are in a position where you will be submitting expense reports all the time for travel, etc or you are in a position that handles the companies money, a credit check gets run.

The un spoken idea is that if you can't handle your money, how are your going to handle the companies money and are you going to take money from the company......

I agree with [MENTION=52280]nakranij[/MENTION]. But it is off topic from the OP.

The sticker on my truck was around $43k. I traded in my 02 ZR2 Blazer that had 75k miles. I walked out the door paying a little over $29K. My payments were $460 a month for 60 months. I always pay extra on all my loans. With interest rates dropping over the last couple of years I just refinanced the loan making the same payment but knocking 6 months off the total loan. It had 6 mile on it when I drove it off the lot.